Finn found a Word document that Gibson had transferred from one computer to another. It contained the number codes Jonas had mentioned—about twenty of them in a row, with just one name at the top—and more than anything else he’d seen, this set Finn’s heart beating a little faster.
The name at the top was Aleksandr Naumenko, and Finn knew that the numbers were not code, but the identifiers for Swiss bank accounts. He knew this, because one of them was his own.
They knew about the money; they knew about his links to Naumenko. This was what he’d been looking for and had hoped not to find, a suggestion that the surveillance had been part of some retrospective examination of his record, that they were coming after him because they’d finally uncovered his business relationship with a Russian oligarch.
He heard a noise somewhere in the apartment, and automatically shut the laptop and pulled the memory stick out of the USB port, slipping it into his pocket. He looked at the time, realizing he’d been poring over the files for an hour.
He heard the soft pad of footsteps, and Adrienne came in wearing a long white flannel nightshirt. He didn’t think he’d seen it before, but she looked great in it, the material showing off her curves, teasing around the movement of her breasts.
The part of him that was always at a step’s remove noted how clichéd it was to be newly attracted to a partner after an enforced separation, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d seen her beauty afresh since the moment she’d opened the door earlier that evening, and now that beauty was magnified further by being stripped down to the simplest of garments.
For the briefest of hopeful moments, he imagined her putting a finger to her lips, pulling the nightshirt over her head. But even if Finn had succumbed to cliché, Adrienne had not. She sat on the edge of the coffee table, close enough to whisper but still at a distance. He simultaneously admired and resented her for it.
She’d had something in mind, but looked down at the laptop and said, “That’s Mathieu’s old computer—what are you doing with it?”
“Not very much, as it happens. Mathieu did warn me.”
“I have mine here—you could have borrowed it.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Couldn’t you sleep?”
It was the most innocuous question but the response was flinty. “Yes, you told me a very nice story earlier this evening, about helping Debbie and Ethan, about going to find Hailey.”
“Go on.”
“Only, you did wish so much that I hadn’t imagined things about your past, that it was really all my fault that Debbie came to you. Is that not so?”
He nodded, knowing what was coming, his expression one of capitulation as much as anything else, and he was amazed and frustrated by his inability to stop messing up.
“So, Hailey was talking to me in the bedroom, about how I’d been right all along, about you being a spy. I pretended it was nothing, of course, but I was so angry. I lay awake, waiting for her to fall asleep.”
“I couldn’t tell you this evening because everyone was milling around, and there was a lot to tell—other stuff, I mean.”
Her whisper became rapid and angry. “Why could you not tell me a year ago—two years? Why could you not tell me when I guessed? You were a spy, maybe you’re still a spy for all I know, because I know nothing about you, it seems. I know less than this Gibson who I also find out has been watching our apartment.” She stopped, but almost instantly struck another seam. “And how do you think that makes me feel, that everything of our life might have been recorded, people watching us?”
“It wasn’t that kind of surveillance—just my computer, probably phone calls, maybe my movements about the city.”
“How can you be so sure?”
It was an accusation he couldn’t counter.
She looked up at the ceiling with a hint of frustration. “All this time, and you give me nothing. I learn what I suspected all along from a girl. I’m the last to know.”
He shook his head, saying, “You’re not the last to know. They don’t know anything, only that I have a background in intelligence. It’s something I never told you about because—well, hey, despite my form over the last few days, it’s something you’re not really meant to talk about. And I didn’t tell you because it ended badly, because it’s not a chapter of my life that I’m particularly proud of.”
She looked skeptical. “Is there a part of your life that does fill you with pride?”
“When you put it like that—I don’t know. I had a few good years in my late teens.”
Despite everything, she laughed a little, and he was absurdly grateful for that, suggestive as it was that there was still something to hold on to.
“I’m sorry, that was unfair.”
“No, Adrienne, it wasn’t. I’ve been a lousy boyfriend. I’ve held back with you and not been straight, and I didn’t realize how much I loved you until I got back and found you gone. If I’m honest, it even took me a while to realize it then.”
“I’m flattered.”